Brazzaville's vanished thousands

More than 100 000 people fled from Brazzaville in mid-December when
fighting flared once again -- and aid workers have no idea what happened to
them.

TENS of thousands of people are still unaccounted for weeks after
being displaced from Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, by
renewed fighting there.

According to international humanitarian groups working in Congo, there
has been no word on the some 100,000 to 150,000 people displaced by
the fighting, which started in mid-December.

"We have absolutely no news of them. We don't know if they are
dead or hiding in villages," Eric Laroche, representative of the
UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Congo-Brazzaville told journalists late
last month.

Laroche said while on a visit to Kinshasa, capital of the neighbouring
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is just across the River
Congo from Brazzaville, that the displaced people whom humanitarian
organisations had lost track of were those who had fled at the start
of fighting in Brazzaville and its southern suburbs. The combats have
pitted forces loyal to President Denis Sassou Nguesso against the
Ninjas, a militia that supports ex-prime minister Bernard Kolelas.

Kolelas has lived in exile since Nguesso seized power in October 1997,
after winning a five-month civil war and ousting then president Pascal
Lissouba.

The Ninjas, who control the Pool region just south of
Brazzaville, had
infiltrated the capital's southern suburbs late last
year. The regular army
reacted on Dec. 15 with an offensive against these
areas. With the help
of the Cobras, the president's militia, and the
Angolan army - which
helped Sassou win the 1997 civil war - the army has
been pounding
neigbourhoods and villages south of the capital.

Human rights groups charged at a mid-January meeting
in Paris,
France, that atrocities were being committed in
Brazzaville but little
international attention was being focussed on that.

"Information reaching my organisation shows that the unrest,
aggression and massive human rights abuses now being perpetrated in
Congo ... are becoming, especially in Brazzaville, organised
killings," said Jean Fino of the International Federation of
Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (FIACAT).

Michel Forst, director of Amnesty International's French chapter, said
"...there is no doubt that there has been a large-scale massacre
that justifies the fears of those who speak of genocide".

Participants quoted diplomatic and military sources as saying that
youths aged 15 and above had been systematically killed.

Some weeks before, the Observatoire Congolais des
Droits de
l'Homme (OCDH), the main human rights body in Congo,
had issued a
petition against ethnic cleansing in the Central
African nation. "The
tragedy in Congo-Brazzaville is a real planned
genocide undertaken
and carried out by the self-proclaimed regime in
Brazzaville," the
OCDH had said.

Hence the mass flight from the Congolese capital. The
displacees had
fled southward, according to Laroche. "They left in
bunches," he said.
"They were seen in various places in the beginning
and then, since
then, we don't know where they are any more."

Also missing are about 20 percent of the local staff
of UN agencies in
Brazzaville.

According to Laroche, the "lost persons" include
women in a very weak
state, children suffering from kwashiorkor and elderly
people.
"Wherever these people are, we know they are
suffering," he said.
"They have to be taken care of. The problem is that
there has been no
news of them. Nobody is able to tell us where they
are, what they are
doing and the state they are in."

The UNICEF official said the humanitarian
organisations had asked the
Brazzaville authorities in vain to help them locate
the displaced
persons. "There is something which is really
curious," he said, adding
that, "there is a right, there are humanitarian
principles that govern
people who are displaced. These are UN principles
accepted by all
states. For the moment, these principles are not being
respected."

The issue is compounded by the fact that the
humanitarian agencies do
not have the means to go and provide assistance for
those who need it.
"We have no solution for these 100,000 to 150,000
people lost in the
south and we are not alone in this," said Laroche.
"We don't know what
to do. We don't have the means to do anything."

Southern Congo is the stronghold of Kolelas' Ninjas
and the Lissouba's
Cocoyes militia. These groups, which stepped up their
attacks and acts
of sabotage in the southern regions of the Pool, Niari
and Lekoumou,
are now being tracked down by government forces and as
they comb
various areas in the south, people have been fleeing
them en masse.

Some displacees walked to the economic capital, Pointe
Noire, a
distance of more than 500 kms. Others got lost in the
extensive
Mayombe forest in southern Congo. Others were blocked
by fighting
which went on for weeks at Dolisie, a town along the
railway linking
Brazzaville and Pointe Noire, between the regular army
and Cocoye
militias.

The fighting in and near Brazzaville has killed 1,000
to 1,500 people,
according to official figures, but humanitarian
agencies say the death
toll is twice as high. -- IPS/Misa, February 3, 1999.